Original Description:
One of the very first things that I reckoned I would need to do differently on the next cover for The Elements of Friendship‘s cover art, for _The Elements of Friendship, Book IS [interlude one-point-five]: Bonds, is that I wanted to do the characters in a higher resolution.
The lightning that’s ensnared proved to be more of a challenge than I would have liked. Even though I promised her that I would not get her involved, I still ended up having to enlist the aid of StarryOak in perfecting it. The previous attempts at a lightning-cage were… a travesty, in essence. A “well made, well intentioned travesty” in her own words, but still one. I seriously owe her for all the behind-the-scenes work that she’s put into EOF.
The design of Queen Selena was heavily derived from one of the concept sketches for Princess Selena as depicted by Xebck in her fanart located here. Her Celestia-colored secondaries are a bit of a yin-yang thing that she and Celestia share in EOF, where Celestia has NMM-colored secondaries on her wings (like this gorgeous bit of fanart on Tumblr).